Hi friend,
Last time we talked about your circle and who goes with you.
Today, the fifth and final pillar. Resources. Your capacity.
I'll start with what I got wrong for years.
I used to think money was the thing. If I just had the money, the business would work. The plans would happen. Everything would move. I called it seeking financial independence
Then I got clearer about what I was actually working with, and money turned out to be one item on a much longer list.
Your resources are your time. Your energy. Your attention. Your money. Your skills and knowledge. Your people. Your tools and systems. And your body, which quietly decides how much of the rest you can use.
That last one is where this gets personal, so let me be plain.
Most of you don't know that I live with ME, myalgic encephalomyelitis. Chronic fatigue syndrome.
In practice, that means this. Imagine your phone. Most people's charge to a hundred overnight, and if they run low they plug in, and it fills back up. Mine doesn't work that way. Some mornings I wake up at ten per cent, and there is no charger. That's the whole day's supply, and it doesn't matter what's in my calendar. Some days I genuinely wake up at a hundred. The hard part is that I never know which day I'm getting until I'm already in it.
A few weeks ago, I felt unwell, and then I cooked, got my hair done, and did a few other things that evening. While I was doing it, it felt like I had the energy. The moment I stopped, I collapsed. That's the flare-up that delayed these letters.
I'm not telling you that for sympathy. I'm telling you because it taught me the thing this whole pillar rests on.
I could have all the money in the world, the right team, every tool. Energy is still not something I can simply decide to have.
So what do you do when a resource is genuinely limited?
You stop managing it and start mastering it.
There's nothing wrong with time management. Learn it.
But management keeps things from going wrong. Mastery is different.
Mastery means you know how you actually work, so you can leverage what you have instead of just protecting it.
And here's what mastery needs. It needs you to know yourself better than anyone else does.
How long a task actually takes you. Not how long it should take, or how long it takes someone else. How long it takes you. If a thing takes another person one hour and takes you four hours you are going to plan very differently once you admit it.
My mother had a way of saying it. Know thyself is not a curse. C-U-R-S-E. Nobody is punishing you by asking you to look at yourself honestly.
The most important book you will ever read is the Book of You. Not another productivity book. Yours. And you can only read it if you stop long enough to look, which most of us never do. We just keep moving.
So a few things I've learned the hard way, and am still learning.
Know your numbers. Resources are a numbers game. You have 168 hours in a week, and what you don't account for, you lose. Same with money. If you don't know what's coming in and going out, subscriptions quietly leave your account and debt sits there costing you, and that is capacity gone for nothing.
Routine beats random. Every time. The things that keep me functioning are not dramatic. They are simple things I do at the end of the day, on purpose, whether or not I feel like it.
Pace yourself with tools, not vibes. I don't imagine I'm pacing myself. I use something to check it, because imagining is how I ended up flat on my back after a haircut and a pot of soup.
And there is no time called later. Not on the clock, not on the calendar. Every time I said I'd do something later, I forgot completely, until someone mentioned it and I thought, oh. The reason a thing isn't built is usually that it was never allocated.
Which brings me to motivation.
Motivation is lovely when it shows up. But the question that matters is what you do when it doesn't, and when nobody is watching, and when your body has its own plans.
That's not a discipline problem. That's a resource problem. And resources can be allocated.
My therapist asked me once, how do you keep going?
The honest answer is that it starts in my mind. I was dealt this hand. I'm going to leverage it. The things in my heart still need doing, and there's no version of this where I wait to be rescued into having more energy.
That's how three books got written by someone who is sometimes wiped out by two phone calls.
This is why the fifth instrument is called Claim Your Capacity.
Not expand your capacity. Not push through it.
Claim it. Know what you actually have, and then use it on purpose.
So, this week's quiet question.
Which of your resources have you never actually counted?
Your hours. Your money. Your energy. Pick one and just look at the real number.
DK
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